Blog Posts – Page 3 – Mike Berry Associates

Need for Speed online

I read recently that in the ‘Browser Wars’, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s share has dipped below 50% of all users (on all devices, globally). Lest we forget, in 2004, IE’s share was 95%. Firefox was the first real challenger to IE and continues to gain ground, but the big winner is Google Chrome, which positions itself as a new, fast browser.

‘New’ is a familiar advertising copy word which has been proven to be effective (after all, new must be ‘improved’…). But what about ‘fast’? The car manufacturers aren’t allowed to sell ‘speed’ any more but browser makers still can.

Google announced last […]

Mike Berry2021-09-23T16:57:33+00:00December 29th, 2011|Trends|1 Comment

Email marketing: timeless classic or just horribly old-fashioned?

I recently chaired the Econsultancy Client Roundtable for email marketing specialists. Over an afternoon in London, we discussed email marketing – trends, challenges and best practice. Attendees were people who know; they do this stuff every day for major corporations and charities.

The discussion was very stimulating and wide-ranging.

The whole session was held under ‘Chatham House Rules’; so I won’t associate specific comments with individuals.

For the expert practitioners who attended the Roundtable, […]

Mike Berry2021-08-18T09:00:49+00:00May 24th, 2011|Email marketing|11 Comments

Is SEO the new spin?

We all know digital has disrupted everything in marketing: Advertising, Direct, Promotions, Design and yes, even PR.

Of course journalists have always had space to fill and demanding editors to appease. In this digital age, they are, as ever, under constant pressure to come up with interesting content which people want to read and which sells magazines/ newspapers/ TV advertising. The ‘Digital Revolution’ hasn’t changed this.

But digital has, nevertheless, changed PR. Today, pretty much all journalism appears somewhere online. Not all appears in print. And people are reading the online stuff! PR agencies report that their clients […]

Mike Berry2011-09-01T09:49:03+00:00March 30th, 2011|SEO|6 Comments

Integrated solutions need integrated knowledge

Seems like everyone’s talking about integration of digital platforms at the moment. However in my experience, far fewer people are actually doing it. We still have Search specialists, Social Media specialists and Mobile specialists. They’re not talking to each other enough. These silos exist both within client marketing departments and in the agency world.

But the winds of change are […]

Mike Berry2011-09-02T13:35:20+00:00February 5th, 2011|Agencies, Integration|3 Comments

Smart(phone) marketing

Cell phone (US). Handy (Germany). Mobile phone (UK). Mobile device? (Global).

Next time you leave your house, apartment, factory, college or office, take a look at the people on the street. Many of them will be talking. But not many to each other. They may also be reading. But not newspapers. Or typing. But not on giant PC keyboards. Aargh! Quick: better check your smartphone is safely in your inside pocket and, crucially, switched on. Breathe. Calm. It’s OK: you’re connected to the global cellular/mobile internet life support system. Phew.

How these shiny gadgets have come to dominate our lives. But do they […]

Mike Berry2011-09-02T13:31:13+00:00January 16th, 2011|Mobile|8 Comments

2010: The Year Of The Tablet

What do you want for Christmas? Well apparently thousands of us will be hoping Santa brings us a tablet computer. Last year that wasn’t really an option (btw how much am I bid for a 2009 netbook?). On January 27th 2010, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed “Netbooks aren’t better at anything!” (although to be fair, Steve, most are at least pretty good at multitasking and many even support Flash). He went on, as had been widely predicted, to introduce a ‘magical and revolutionary product’: the

Mike Berry2021-09-23T17:05:46+00:00December 5th, 2010|Tech companies|9 Comments

Bumbling politicians serve up digital dog’s dinner

“The Law is an Ass” says Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Yes, even here in Good Old Blighty, the oldest democracy in the world (err…sorry Iceland, Greece, Isle of Man, America, NZ +++), we sometimes get it badly wrong: the upshot being that we end up with laws that are ridiculous, unenforceable, dangerous or all of these. One such is the new UK Digital Economy Act (DEA). The Act was rushed through by the last UK Government without proper scrutiny or discussion, in the pre-election ‘wash-up’ period.

I recently took part in a debate […]

Mike Berry2021-09-23T17:10:03+00:00July 25th, 2010|General, Trends|13 Comments

Changing Times. But will we pay?

Today, we find a place to rent or a house to buy, we book a holiday and stay in touch with our friends using different technologies from those our parents relied on 25 years ago. We all know the internet has changed the world, both economically and sociologically. We call it ‘The Internet Revolution’, but this wasn’t just an event which occurred in 1998 (say) and then stopped. It’s an ongoing process. This is the Revolution. We’re in it. And big changes will […]

Mike Berry2021-08-16T23:18:24+00:00June 14th, 2010|Trends|6 Comments

Digital? Direct? Or just Marketing?

(This post first appeared on the UK Institute of Direct Marketing Blog: http://www.theidm.com/blog/ .)

Maggie. Dallas. Durannies. Lunch may have been for wimps, but there were plenty tucking in.
The 1980s. It was an exciting time. A combination of factors meant that Direct Marketing (a term which was coined around this time to include ‘direct mail marketing’ and ‘direct response advertising’) became ‘respectable’ and was even acknowledged for its creativity. In […]

Mike Berry2021-09-23T17:14:03+00:00May 30th, 2010|Integration|10 Comments

Getting the most out of digital agency relationships

(An edited version of this post first appeared on www.aprais.com.

Aprais is a global business relationship management consultancy.)

For most people working in marketing, the ideal client/ agency relationship is a healthy one, based on mutual respect and perceived equality: i.e. a true partnership. However we all know “all good things must come to an end” and with agency-client relationships, this sometimes happens prematurely.

So what about digital? Well because digital is still relatively new, and fast-changing, the picture is fragmented. And because digital is growing so fast in […]

Mike Berry2011-09-02T13:33:49+00:00April 25th, 2010|Agencies|3 Comments